Nonlocal Optomechanics: Hybrid Anapole Opens a New Route to Optical Tweezing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel nonlocal optomechanical approach using hybrid anapole states, enabling advanced optical manipulation of resonant nanoparticles beyond traditional optical tweezers.

Contribution

It presents a new framework for nanoparticle manipulation leveraging nonlocal effects and hybrid anapole states, diverging from conventional local multipole-based optical tweezing.

Findings

Hybrid anapole states enable nonlocal optical forces.

Nonlocal manipulation shows spatially varying forces.

Traditional multipole cancellation does not eliminate all optical forces.

Abstract

Optical tweezers confine a particle in an intensity-defined potential well by engaging its local multipoles. In this picture, eliminating far-field scattering from the particle should cancel the optical force, as the multipole moments underpinning the conventional optomechanical response vanish. We show that certain resonant states, such as, e.g., the hybrid anapole state, enable qualitatively different optical manipulation, nonlocal by nature, where the optical force exhibits nontrivial spatial variations absent in conventional tweezing, establishing a new framework for manipulating resonant nanoparticles.